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Lightweight Construction by using Fluidinjection Technology - Visit us on this years' K Show

Lightweight construction by using Fluidinjection Technology
Visit us on this years' K Show

On October 19th, once again the K Show open its gates and presents everything the sector for plastics and rubber has to offer in 2016:
Everything from the latest state of the art and trailblazing innovations to development visions.

We are therefore especially pleased to present this year again our machine technology and the innovative possibilities of the fluidinjection technology together with our partners WOOJIN PLAIMM, AKRO-PLASTIC and M.TEC.

Visit us on WOOJIN PLAIMMS' booth 15D58 in hall 15 and be inspired from us by the latest trends and developments in the field of lightweight construction design.

Lightweight construction becomes a more and more important topic in all areas of life.

Today, the lightweight construction is hardly imaginable in the automotive industry due to the constantly growing requirements of weight reduction while improving the performance. Today's emission regulations are hardly to keep withouth corresponding weight optimizations, but even for the driving dynamics the weight and distribution plays a decisive role.

In the beginning, the fluid injection was primarily used to improve surfaces or to realize complex part geometries which otherwise could not have been produced. Today's task is considerably more complex and means totally different challenges to the parts and the manufacturing processes:

First examples of fluid injection parts with this target in cars were media pipes made of plastics. The plastic coolant pipe has its beginnings in Europe middle of the last decade and is nowadays hardly imaginable in the underhood. Applications like dipstick leads and various filler necks have followed then. But the potential for the underhood is by far not fully exploited yet.
We can think here for e.g. of integrated leads in the oil sump or the valve hood.

A relavtive new area with a strong growth, are most different structure components.
The clutch pedal with WIT (Water Injection Technology) has been already in series production for some years. This application has taken now another innovation step by the substitution of glass firbers by carbon-fibers. The material B3 ICF15 for this series application is provided by AKRO-PLASTIC from Niederzissen. It is optimized for the water injection process and gets produced in very narrow carbon fiber tolerances. This enables to use the full potential of the PME machine technology and therefore to produce parts with the highest possible precision and a weight tolerance less than 0.5% and surpasses the strength of glass-fiber reinforced polyamide whilst being 12.5% lighter.

This application will be also shown as a live production on this years' K Show in cooperation with WOOJIN PLAIMM on the booth 15D58 in hall 15.

The next stage of development here will be a brake pedal with fluid injection at which different technologies are combined for the stregthening and weight optimiszation.

Another, new range for fluid injection applications are structural parts of automobile seats. The specific combination of suitable materials, channels for the better filling and the increasing of stiffness, as well as specific, partial reinforcements with unidirectional fibers lead to light and cost-effective seats that meets also all requirements here.

New process variations with WIT enable also in the area of body structures completely new opportunities. Not so long ago, the combination of long glass-fiber reinforced polymers in combination with WIT was still an almost unresovable challenge.
PME has met this challenge and by new process variations and developments, it is now also possible to realize parts like front-ends, passenger doors or spare wheel wells.

Besides the feasibility, the part design with its calculations plays also a very important role to enable the realization of such parts.

Together with our partner M.TEC we offer to our customers a holistic portfolio - from the idea up to series production.
This includes engineering in all stages of the part development: Construction, simulation and calculation, process development as well as mold and production technology.

The engineers of M.TEC have a comprehensive know-how for the realization of innovative lightweight construction structures. They develop in the field of both fiber-reinforced composites and hybrid construction suitable material and manufacture-oriented solutions.

Crucial for composites is to find the perfect part structure already before starting with the CAD design. This requires a rethinking in the development. Right after the construction is defined and the mechanical boundary conditions are specified, the optimal structure of the parts is found out by a simulation. These calculations already determine the geometry of the part substantially so that the first part design can be done with an improved structure.

For the development of lightweight parts, it is besides the material saving, all about to combine the right material with an improved part structure for each application. Already in the first develompent stage, all influencing factors from the manufacturing must be included as well. The production process has decisive influence on the fiber orientation and structures and therefore also on the stability and strength of the part at use of light metals, fiber-reinforced composites and hybrid structures.

The integrated simulation approach of M.TEC considers both, the results of the mechanical FEM calculation and the anisotropic material behavior.
Therefore, the engineers of M.TEC have a special material model available which allows to simulate and to evaluate the composite behavior both at static loads and high dynamic processes up to failure. This ensures the stress and process related design of the part.